AUSTRALIANS AT WAR

THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY is a compelling factual history of neoconservatism and its influence on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Click on image above for details.

Friday, March 13, 2015

WARHAWKS AND REPUBLICANS ARE ON THE RISE AGAIN FOR THEIR SECOND ATTEMPT AT CREATING A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY

One could be forgiven for thinking that the election of a popular
Democrat president in 2008 who had promised peace and an end to the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, that the world could have looked forward to peaceful days
ahead. Instead the war in Iraq has backfired on the US and has led directly to
the mess the Middle East now finds itself in as the Islamic State (IS) spreads
its poison across the region. All that President Obama seems to have achieved
is to postpone what now seems to be the inevitable explosion that will likely occur
after he has gone.

Obama’s failure to stabilise the Middle East stems directly from his
inability to insist that Palestine be given statehood in a territory that is
not subordinate to Israel in any way. His protests to Israel over settlement
building in the West Bank have been completely ignored. His failure to see that
Netanyahu and his fellow right-wing Zionists within the Israeli government have
never had any intention of allowing Palestine to become a sovereign state –
despite the pretence of ‘talks’ that kept Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
and later John Kerry needlessly on the go for years – has brought only misery
and poverty to the Palestinian people as the Israelis destroyed their homes in
the
Gaza Strip and taken their freedom and lands in the West Bank. Meanwhile, the
‘Arab Spring’ saw the disintegration of Syria, Libya and Egypt. As the Syrian
civil war turned into something akin to the Spanish Civil War where foreign
fighters flocked to fight governments and then each other as it degenerated
into a bloodbath where thousands died, Obama was unable to prevent Iraq from
being sucked into the vortex of so-called ‘Islamic extremism’.

Obama’s failure was his inability to see how inevitable this all was. Obama’s
inability to resist Israeli demands that the Syrian revolution against
President Bashir al-Assad be supported by the US meant that the violence there
escalated out of control as the various factional interests fighting against
al-Assad’s government began to polarise into powerful groups that eventually
coalesced into what we see there today; a pseudo-religious anarchical-fascist
phenomenon that seems to be growing exponentially. And initially all this was
allowed to happen because of Israel and America’s support for just about anyone
fighting al-Assad and his allies Hezbollah and Iran.

Now the situation has become almost out of control. Feeding the
so-called ‘Islamists’ is the US and their allies’ air attacks against IS in
Iraq and Syria which seems to achieve nothing except infuriate the extremists
to the point where they become ever more blood-thirsty in the lands they occupy
and threaten to attack those countries that attack them using violent acts of
terrorism. Right-wing Western governments, including Canada, New Zealand and
Australia, have pledged support to the effort to confront IS thus exposing the
peoples of those nations to retaliation.

Obama has found himself in a strange place where he knows that
Americans are fed up with war. Iraq cost America dearly. Obama knows he can’t
go to war again for Israel as Netanyahu has demanded. Iran is not Iraq. While
Iran supports al-Assad in Syria, Obama has kept that issue away from his
attempts to find a way to ensure Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
Obama, rightly, regards diplomacy and negotiation as the way to settle the
issue while the Republican warhawks, the neoconservatives and the Christian
Zionists of the Western world together with the right-wing Zionists of Israel would
prefer to use force. They regard Iran’s nuclear program as an ‘existential
threat’ to Israel.

For years Israel has accused Iran of having a nuclear weapons program
and that Iran is hell-bent on ‘wiping Israel off the map’. Netanyahu has not
let go of this meme and now, as Obama’s presidency comes into its final months
before in the run up to the 2016 Presidential elections, the warhawks in both
the US and Israel begin clamouring again for action against Iran.

Helping their cause is the rampant growth of IS atrocities, military
successes, and apparent attraction of their cause to Muslim youths trapped in a
Western world that they see as Islamophobic and which has evolved into a
vicious cycle of mutual hatred – one that ultimately the disaffected youth that
are caught up in it cannot win. It is only a matter of time before the Western
nations led by a Republican US government dominated by warhawks and
neoconservatives go all out to crush IS in its tracks.

Meanwhile, Israel, buoyed by both a renewed militarism in the US and a
revitalised alliance with Israel that would characterise a Republican
administration, would, with the full support of the US and its Western allies,
deal with its own enemies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

For the warhawks, Republicans and their extreme right-wing allies both
in Israel and within the Western world, the up-coming elections in Israel and
the 2016 presidential elections will be crucial.

In Israel, the 17 March elections will likely return a staunchly pro-Zionist
government into office no matter who wins – and one should remember that
virtually the entire Israeli political system is right-wing compared to other
so-called Western democracies. One should not be lulled into thinking that any
party in Israel labelled as ‘left-wing’ is actually left-wing. The reality is
that it’s simply not as right-wing as many of the ultra-nationalist extreme
right-wing parties that envisage a Greater Israel free off all Arabs and
including an annexed Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Neoconservatives in the US are already promoting their preferred
Republican candidates with Jeb Bush being seriously backed by the big money
donators. Scott Walker is also in the Republican frame being backed by the
neoconservatives.

On 20 January 2017 the world’s political landscape is likely to
suddenly change for the worse if a foreign policy focussed Republican wins the
presidential election, a right-wing nationalist Israeli government is formed
after the coming 17 March elections, and no significant inroads towards the
defeat of IS has occurred.

For the people of the US, while they’d prefer to keep out of wars, the
atrocities being committed in the Middle East by IS may prove to be a tipping
point for many voters who may find a Republican promise to put an end to the
reign of IS hard to resist. They may well fall again for the promise of a quiet
Middle East once Iran and IS have been dealt with – just as they did in 2003.

As
the Obama years draw to a close and his promises of a lasting peace shattered,
so the warhawks, neocons and their allies around the world with their delusions
of Western Exceptionalism will once again bring the world to the brink of
catastrophe in the Middle East – and possibly even beyond the brink.

Oddly Trump may actually be the lesser of the extant evils (as opposed to Clinton most likely).He's spoken against the Trans pacific partnership, the F-35 fighter jet programme and the likes of that deranged dalek Max Boot worry about an isolationist U.S under Trump who says that the yanks shouldn't be the worlds policeman.I've no doubt Trump is out of his mind and when he talks about torture its most concerning, but from here in Australia, he's so far removed from the american empire's establishment that he may not be so bad.If Max "the dalek" Boot is worried then his evil is my good and thats what I want, to be free from america, no bases, no spying, no wars, no bullying and no imperialism from them at all.

Certainly Trump and indeed all of the yank pollies are grotesque, but what I think is the greatest threat to humanity is the american empire.A "leader" that brings about the collapse of that edifice , even inadvertantly sounds good to me, even though I've no doubt Trump in particular is a an utter nutter, he may actually do some good by happenstance.I recall your pointed criticisms of Max Boot and his ilk previously, so by extension, whatever upsets him surely can't be all that bad.I'd be delighted to see the TPP, the F-35 programme etc. fold and then a yank withdrawal from the world.What say you squire?.

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About Me

is an Aeronautical Engineer, Historian and general carer of what goes on in the world.
Apart from an earlier career in engineering, Lataan also has a First Class Honours BA degree in History and a PhD in International Politics.
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